


You're a Grounded Chicken, Din Djarin

by Lady_Vibeke



Series: Cara Dune & Din Djarin: Tales of Two Space Idiots in Love [43]
Category: The Mandalorian (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Bad Ideas, Banter, Bickering, F/M, Flirting, Fluff, Humor, Idiots in Love, Slice of Life, Teasing, The Rising Phoenix, stuck in a tree, unspoken feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-27
Updated: 2020-12-27
Packaged: 2021-03-10 17:47:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28361145
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lady_Vibeke/pseuds/Lady_Vibeke
Summary: He had spotted a clearing in the middle of the woods during their landing, a couple of days ago, and wanted to take advantage of the early hour to get better acquainted with his new piece of equipment. It didn't go exactly as planned.Now the sun has crept up from the eastern mountain crest and it's painting everything in sight in a beautiful golden glow. Din has a particularly advantageous point of view over all of this; in fact, he has had the privilege of witnessing one of the most beautiful sunrises he's ever seen from a spot only birds would normally be able to reach, which is, admittedly, the only bright side of this whole predicament he's gotten himself into. Worst part of all of this: Cara is never going to let him hear the end of it.She's in her sleeping clothes, shirt and shorts, and barefoot, looking up at him with an annoyingly knowing grin that suggests she has an very precise idea of what is going on.“'morning,” she greets, concealing her amusement behind an affable smile that Din doesn't buy for a second. He groans under his helmet.[ Din gets himself into a sticky situation while practicing the Rising Phoenix in secret. Cara and kid to the rescue. ]
Relationships: Din Djarin & Cara Dune & Grogu | Baby Yoda, Din Djarin/Cara Dune
Series: Cara Dune & Din Djarin: Tales of Two Space Idiots in Love [43]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1709416
Comments: 25
Kudos: 102





	You're a Grounded Chicken, Din Djarin

**Author's Note:**

> Canon divergent from s01e08 on: Cara goes with Din after taking down Gideon and they travel together.
> 
> This has been sitting in my drafts folder for way too long at these couple of days off finally granted me some time to write. This entire fic was inspired by [by this amazing comic strip Lauren Kowal](https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=https%3A%2F%2Fmyfunnymemes.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2015%2F04%2FStop-Waiting-For-Your-Prince-Charming.-Go-Out-Find-Him-In-Comic-By-Lauren-Kowal.jpg&t=Yjg5ODU4NTc2MGVmNDZjZDZjY2I5MmUwNWY5ZDdjY2JlMDc4MWM0NSw4YTBkMmVmMWE0YTIwODcwZWMyNzYyZWQ3Y2IxMzI4ZTRhNzYyMTY5&ts=1605517205).
> 
> And this is the my edit for the CaraDin version of this comic [(which you can also find on tumblr)](https://beautiful-thensad-thensadder.tumblr.com/post/634936254169038848/):

The moment Cara appears with the kid in her arms, Din, several feet above, exhales a relieved sigh he will _never_ admit was ever there, let alone to Cara, whose shit-eating expression while she's gazing up at him is already insufferable enough without her knowing he's been praying for her to show up for about two hours.

The sun hadn't even come up yet when he padded out of the ship, jetpack on his back, leaving Cara and the child still slumbering peacefully. He had spotted a clearing in the middle of the woods during their landing, a couple of days ago, and wanted to take advantage of the early hour to get better acquainted with his new piece of equipment. It didn't go exactly as planned.

Now the sun has crept up from the eastern mountain crest and it's painting everything in sight in a beautiful golden glow. Din has a particularly advantageous point of view over all of this; in fact, he has had the privilege of witnessing one of the most beautiful sunrises he's ever seen from a spot only birds would normally be able to reach, which is, admittedly, the only bright side of this whole predicament he's gotten himself into. Worst part of all of this: Cara is never going to let him hear the end of it.

She's in her sleeping clothes, shirt and shorts, and barefoot, looking up at him with an annoyingly knowing grin that suggests she has an very precise idea of what is going on.

“'morning,” she greets, concealing her amusement behind an affable smile that Din doesn't buy for a second. He groans under his helmet. The thick branch he's stuck into flexes and creaks; he holds on a little tighter to the two smaller branches at his sides.

The kid points up a hand in Din's direction, cooing happily. He's propped upon Cara's chest, supported by her arm, and still looks a bit sleepy: his head is nestled under Cara's chin, one of his big ears tickling her all along her jawline up to her ear and the other one sticking up in the air, idly reacting to any unfamiliar sound coming from the woods.

Cara's grin widens. “Looks like daddy encountered complications while practising his Rising Chicken,” she tells the kid.

Despite being stuck into a tree— and having been there for about two, mortifying hours—Din somehow finds the dignity to growl, _“Phoenix.”_

Cara furrows her brow. “Come again? I can't hear you down here!”

“It's Rising _Phoenix,”_ Din grouses, “and you know it.”

“Well, your Rising Phoenix seems to have a landing problem,” Cara smirks.

The child appears as amused as she is by the whole situation: he's giggling, looking between Din and Cara as though he gets every single hue of their bickering—which is virtually impossible since Din himself doesn't really know what he and Cara are doing. All he knows is that whenever they pick up one of their verbal fights he always ends up grinning like an idiot, whether he loses or wins. He normally loses, anyway, and today is probably going to make no exception.

He lets out a sigh as heavy as he can manage, refusing to acknowledge the warmth her smile has brought to his neck and ears. “Are you just going to stand there and make fun of me?”

One of Cara's eyebrows quirks up. “It sounds like a good plan, actually.” There is a hint of dimples in her cheeks, which could easily be insufferable, if only it didn't look so good on her. Not that Din is any mood to admit that, as of now. If she knew what her dimples do to him...

“Help me down this thing, Dune,” he snaps, or tires to. His voice is mysteriously hoarse, but he dismisses it quickly by blaming it on the cold he's caught in these two hours of... captivity.

“You could ask nicely, you know?” she teases, sweet and suave. Something in her tone makes the child giggle, and for a split second Din almost believes the little brat understands irony better than Din himself.

Din has no energy left to deal with these shenanigans, though, so he just barks back a very impatient _“Please!”_ that makes Cara scoff.

“That didn't sound nice _at all.”_

“Please?” Din tries again, this time sounding a bit desperate. It seems to be good enough to Cara.

“See, it wasn't that hard.” She bends to set the kid down on the grass. “Stay here, buddy. I'm gonna help the chicken down the tree.”

Din is too relieved to be finally released from this uncomfortable situation to dare to correct Cara's persistent mockery of the fine art of the Rising Phoenix. Although, he grudgingly reflects, this morning's performance was probably closer to a clumsy chicken rather than the majestic phoenix he's supposed to embody. He'll get there in due time, he swears to himself. Perhaps practising on his own wasn't the best idea, all in all.

And for some reason that really is beyond Din, Cara's expression is growing softer, now, as if, instead of being unnecessarily blunt, he just paid her a very flattering compliment. The sigh coming from Din must have sounded less exasperated than he thought, because Cara can't hold back a chuckle that remains plastered across her face as she climbs her way up the old oak.

She's an impressively skilled climber, Din can't help but notice. He can easily imagine this cunning little girl running around in the lush forests of Alderaan, challenging boys to be faster, stronger, more agile than her—with scratches on her knees and elbows, perhaps, and bruises everywhere, and grass and dirt all over her clothes, but always proudly victorious, just as she is now.

She effortlessly reaches one of the larger branches around Din, just slightly above him, and straddles it comfortably, gazing into the distance with a hand to shield her eyes from the hot morning sun.

“Nice view.” She casts a chuckle down at Din. “How long have you been stuck? Did you see the sunrise from up here?”

Din groans, and his pride along with him. “Shut up.”

It doesn't seem to be of any real concern to Cara how long he's been up there, apart from teasing purposes. She reaches down for him, ankles locked together to secure her to her branch.

“C'mon, take my hand, I'm gonna pull you up.”

Din isn't sure he can move: if he lets go of one of the branches he's holding on to, his weight is going to be too much for the branch he's stuck into. On the other hand, he really has no other choice. He tries to reach up for Cara's hand, but instantly feels something crack behind himself.

“The branch is giving in!” he warns. He doesn't want to pull Cara down with him.

“Just take my hand, you dumbass!” she insists. She's close to catching his hand, but in order to get a decent grasp on it she needs to crawl down her branch a little, and it's a mistake.

As soon as she catches Din's hand, his branch surrenders under his weight and before he even knows, he's dragging Cara down into a ten-feet fall to the ground.

When his back, along with the whole jetpack, hits the mossy grass, Din's sight goes white for a second, then his breath get cut off by Cara's weight landing upon him with a muffled cry of pain.

“Dank farrik!”

Their chocked curses overlap as she rolls off him and onto her back, eyes squeezed in pain.

Din's rolls his helmet to his side, trying to blink her into focus and see if she's hurt.

“Are you okay?” she pants, eyes still shut, before he can ask her the same question.

Din still feels like he might throw up any second. It hurts to breathe, but the more he tries, the easier it becomes. He can't imagine what could have happened if there hadn't been the tree to stop his fall from the sky. If he'd got himself killed in such a stupid way, Cara would have revived him to kill him herself.

“Yes,” he wheezes. Why does he want to laugh, all of a sudden? It's good that his chest hurts too much to even consider it, Cara would think he's got a concussion or something. “You?”

It takes Cara a few deep breaths to finally be able to give him a weak nod. “Can't say beskar is the best surface to land upon.”

The kid's curious face appears above their heads, his ears flexing up and down in a silent question.

“It's okay, buddy,” Cara rasps, curling her arm back to blindly scratch his head. “We got him down, one way or another.”

The child cackles and gives Din a pat on his helmet, then plops down between their heads and waits for them to recover. Din and Cara lie side by side on the soft, dewy grass for a few minutes, unable to move. The sky is blue and scattered with puffy white clouds that make it look like a painting.

“So,” she begins once she's caught her breath, “what happened up there?”

He shrugs off the jetpack with a muffled groan. His left shoulder hurts, ut he tries not to think about it. He tells Cara about his intentions and how everything went south when the fuel combustion started malfunctioning, leading the jetpack to fail out of the blue.

“The engine doesn't go well with the humidity around here,” he says. He needs to figure out a way to fix this minor flaw while they're here and he can test any modification directly.

Cara sits up. “You could have hurt yourself very badly, you dumb idiot.”

She doesn't seem angry so much as concerned, and it pulls at the thin seam holding Din's recklessness and arrogance together until it gives in, revealing the thick layer of guilt beneath it.

“You were worried about me?” he asks foolishly, like it's the first time Cara has shown how much she cares about him. He doesn't know why it keeps surprising him to be reminded of that.

Cara crosses her legs and watches him struggle to pulls himself up into a sitting position until she takes pity on him and offers a hand.

“What do you think?” she replies then, while the child climbs up to her lap. She welcomes him with a smile before looking back to Din, “We wake up and you're nowhere to be found, no message, armour gone...”

He can see how this must have looked: he would never leave them behind willingly, especially not without a warning. He should have left a note; he honestly believed he would have been back before they woke up.

“Sorry. It won't happen again,” he promises.

“You kriffing bet it won't!” Cara retorts, using one of the kid's hands to point at him. “You're not flying around unsupervised until you know what you're doing with this thing,” she declares, jabbing the kid's hand into his arm, and the kid enjoys it so much he starts doing that on his own, much to Cara's satisfaction.

“Okay, okay.” Din takes the cackling child into his arms, then shoots Cara an apologetic glance. “Thanks for coming to my rescue.”

“You're welcome,” she says, somehow making it sound like she's still scolding him. “You know,” she adds pensively, “my parents told me a lot of stories about knights in shining armour rescuing pretty lovers in distress, but I never heard anything about—” She scoffs out a laugh that cuts off the rest of the sentence, which Din can't help but to pick up himself.

“—knights in shining armour in distress rescued by pretty lovers?”

He gets why she was so hesitant in saying that out loud one second too late, and by then the words are already out of his mouth, despite his mind screaming _'Compromising!'._

Cara starts picking at a blade of grass at her feet with a casual smile that might or might not be also slightly smug. “Yeah, that's news to the galaxy's tales.”

“I guess the galaxy hasn't seen many Cara Dunes so far,” Din comments with one of the kid's ears in his mouth. He laughs and sets him down to let him run after a frog he just saw hopping by.

Cara is leaning back on her hands. She has stains of grass all over her shorts and the hair on the left side of her head, instead of being tied on its usual braid, is tucked loosely behind her ear.

“So,” she drawls with a glint of mischief in her eyes, _“pretty lovers,_ huh?”

“Ah.” Din fumbles for a reply that won't make his slip worse. “I didn't mean—”

“Oh?” Cara seems very entertained by his awkward babbling. “Which part you didn't mean? The pretty or the—” She freezes when her playful pat on his arm makes him wince and screw his eyes shut. “Are you _hurt?”_

Now she sounds more angry than concerned. She's going to chew his head off for what he's about to confess.

“I hit the shoulder in one of the bad landings.”

Cara's eyes go wide a flare of sheer fury flashes through them.

“Tell me you didn't dislocate it and pop it back yourself,” she begs in the tight tone of somebody who knows they're in for a disappointment.

And Din has no alternative but to mumble out a helpless, “I did.”

There are very few things that gnaw at Cara's extremely fragile patience like Din being irresponsible. She suppresses a frustrated grunt and makes to swat Din's arm, only to remember an inch away from it that he's in pain.

“I thought it was that brat I was supposed to keep an eye on,” she chides, opting to hit his thigh, instead. “Turns out it's his idiot father!”

They argue for a while, until the child decides he's had enough of their bickering and comes to them with a frog dangling from his mouth, which he proceeds to pull out and hold up to them as a third-party peace offering.

“We need to put ice on that,” Cara sighs once they've reassured the little guy they're not having a serious fight, “and get you in a sling.”

Din is in no position to protest. “Okay.”

“It also needs rest, smartass.”

“We don't have time to—”

“The hell we don't,” Cara cuts him off. “The jetpack in confiscated: no _rising_ for you for at least three days. You're a grounded chicken, Din Djarin.”

Din is so glad she can't see how broadly he's grinning. What did he do to deserve this owman in his life?

“ _Phoenix.”_ He tries to sound irritated but there is no way to conceal the mirth in his voice.

Cara rolls her eyes. “Fine, you're a grounded _phoenix!”_ She hits his thigh again, this time with a smile tugging at her mouth. “I can't believe I'm _scolding_ a grown-ass guy who's actually older than me.”

A laugh escapes Din's lips before he can realise what the warm flutter bubbling up his chest is.

He's starting to get used to this—laughing. Before Cara, laughing was other people's business, something alien he couldn't seem to feel on his own skin, let alone inside. Now it's a thing: Din Djarin is a man who _laughs,_ and his brothers and sisters could see him, now, they would never believe it's actually him.

“Thanks for getting me down, by the way.”

“Falling like sacks of potatoes was never in the plan, just so you know.”

“Yeah,” he agrees, staring at her intently enough for her to _feel_ it, “it really wasn't.”

Cara ducks her head sheepishly. Din has a feeling she knows he isn't talking about the incident with the tree: the dimples in her cheeks give away a smile deeper than the one gracing her lips, one Din's own lips and soul are secretly mirroring under the safe shell of his beskar.

She rises to her feet and pokes the toes into his butt to urge him to do the same.

“C'mon, let's go back to the ship. I can't wait to get you out of this armour and see how much of an idiot you truly are.”

He groans as he stands up, not without a considerable effort. Cara is studying his every movement and reaction—to see where he's hurt, he assumes. He can't possibly get away with this.

“I'm fine,” he reassures her, but Cara is no fool.

“We'll see after the bruise count.”

She scans him head to toe, then picks up the kid, shoves him into Din's arms before he can retrieve his jetpack, then she retrieves the jetpack herself with a warning glower in his direction.

“What if I don't have any?” he inquires, well aware there in no way he doesn't have any bruises after the dozens of falls he's taken in this couple of hours. As if this wasn't enough, all his joints hurt from the cold and the humidity and the uncomfortable position he's been stuck into.

“Then I'll give you some,” Cara deadpans, jetpack tucked under her arm as they walk back to the Crest. “Your reckless ass deserves them.”

din doesn't doubt this for a second. If he knows her well enough, Cara will make sure to nurse him back to health first, and then kick his ass with no mercy as soon as he's back in shape. Actually, getting himself into trouble seems to have become a rather pleasant habit, since he met her. He loves it when, at night, the three of them get back to the ship and, however exhausted, they all take care of each other like any other family would do. This is what they are, after all: a little clan of three.

However crazy and complicated it might get, life is surprisingly good, these days.

“Deal.”

**Author's Note:**

> Simple and not overly romantic but sometimes we just need a bit of fun amd some healthy fluffy mutual pining, don't we? I certainly do.
> 
> I hope you enjoyed and if you did I'll be happy to hear what you thought. You cannot imagine how much comments can help authors keep going, we cherish every single word or random keysmash. ❤
> 
> P.S. the title is an intentional nod to my other fic, [You're a Horrible Bowl of Soup, Cara Dune](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23493103), in which Cara also takes care of Din when he's in need.


End file.
